Turning a route into a walking journey of discovery — a UX case study
Tourism brings many benefits to a city, traffic is not one of them. More tourists mean more traffic to the city. Overcrowded public transportation will lead to more tourists and local residents taking alternatives such as driving and taking taxis. More cars running on the road is certainly no good news for the environment.
If more people choose walking instead of driving, the traffic, as well as the damage to the environment, will be vastly reduced. For tourists especially, walking in the cities is always one of the best ways of experiencing the city.
The Challenge
“When you walk, you’re utterly in touch with the drama of the city.”
- Vivian Gornick
Taking more walking routes is doing so much good to the environment, what if it gives you a joyful and memorable experience, too? To bring the thoughts into realization, I decided to tackle this 7-day-challenge:
I used six days of my spare time to tackle this challenge and one more day to write it down. Before I start off, I devised the plan for this challenge to make it achievable in 7 days.
Plan
- Define a clear target: Design one feature that makes the walking route attractive and also beneficial for the product business goal.
- Get into the scenario, understand the travelers and their pain points as well as their needs.
- Analyze the most used navigation Apps and choose one to work on further, learn about its current features and the business objectives.
- Align business with user needs, and design solution which makes both sides beneficial.
Get to know the user
With a clearer plan, it’s time to get to know the users:
- How do tourists move around on city trips?
- How do they make decisions for choosing the best way to get their destination?
- What influences their decisions?
- What makes them happy and what frustrates them?
- What navigation tools do they use, what is their experience with them?
With these questions in mind, I interviewed 5 people who had at least one city trip in the past year. After the interview, I collected their answers on sticky notes and put them on an affinity diagram:
Key Quotes directly from user:
‘‘There’s always something I can discover if I walk more’’
‘‘I would also take a walk in bad weather if there would be interesting things to see along the way’’
‘‘Sometimes I had to search a route(in Google Maps) over and over again’’
Jump in the game
From the interview I learned that all my interviewees are using Google Maps, someone mentioned Citymapper but only for one time. To decide which product to work on, I researched about the navigation Apps again and analyzed the top 3 navigation Apps for tourists:
Google Maps has the most users, with the accurate route calculation, extremely user-friendly interface, and great reviews make it the most popular navigation App.
Citymapper is now available for many big cities, it provides the most actual innercity mobility options, with a focus on walking and biking experience.
Apple Maps is not as popular as Google maps and has limited features to match tourists´ needs.
In the end, I choose Google Maps as a basis to develop my idea further. But one thing got my attention: walking route interface from Citymapper.
The calorie amount that is burned by walking to the destination is provided as additional information on the result screen, and route selection is labeled by ‘Fast’ and ‘Main road’.
So, I decided to conduct a competitor test for Citymapper.
I found two interviewees who I talked to (not Citymapper user) from the interview, asked them to search a walking route with CityMapper. However, they both didn’t react very positively to the interface. I learned that travelers are:
- not keen to lose more energy
- skeptical about the route labeling (fast and main road) and
- feeling unmotivated for taking a walk without knowing the potential point of interest on the route
Ideation and integration
I start to brainstorm possible solutions as many as possible. After prioritizing the ideas, as well as considering the technical feasibility in the current Google Maps App, we finally have a winner:
Feature — Discovering Routes
- Get aligned with the existing features
In Google Maps, there is a feature ‘Explore’ when the user opens the map that helps them to explore more about their current spot. The ‘Explore’ feature is one of the sources that suggest the user where to go next. The new ‘Discovering Routes’ feature would be one more detailed level to expand the exploration.
2. Align user needs with business objectives
It is fantastic that the tourists are now able to make their trips more exciting, but what about the business owner user group? The ‘Discovering Routes’ feature is also completely fitting to the business objective of Google My Business, as it has great potential for discovering retail business and provides its customers with an even more seamless experience.
Discovering Routes — Feature walkthrough
- Discover stops on a walking route
When a user searches a route from A to B in Google maps, there are several transportation options listed in the search result. This is already a good starting point to guide the user to take a walk, as the default suggestion is ‘on foot’. The user sees the route and estimated time to get there. But, ‘‘Should I take a walk?’’
When it comes to decision making, it’s time for our new feature to come to the stage. ‘Discovering Routes’ suggests the user some highlights that are scattered along the route, therefore tourists could get the most out of their walks, as a complete newcomer to the city.
- Save/edit and share a route
During the walk, it’s common that the user checks Google Maps for something else, to make sure all the effort they spend for the route creation won’t get lost, it is also possible for them to save the route for later use.
Prototype
Feel free to try out the prototype :-)
Final Thoughts
As the topic is already given, after finding enough reason to start with it, I spend most of the time to empathize with the user, conduct an in-depth analysis of Google Maps (since my idea should be perfectly integrated into Google Maps) and lastly the presentation of the idea.
Design Validation
Due to time constraints and lockdown situations, I was only able to tests the result with one person. The test ran very smooth and the user reacted very positively about the feature. However, further design validation should come first for the next step.
Idea Iteration
Depending on the outcome of further validation, the second round of ideation could be very helpful. In this 7-day-challenge, I was not able to have an in-depth insight into the problem of tourists using Google Maps on their trip. I’m really curious to find out if my solution fits the user behavior in real scenarios, as well as if there are other better ideas. Therefore I’d like to have more field research to understand their mental model.
Thank you for reading! If you have any feedback or suggestion, I’d love to hear from you. drop me a line, stop by at my page, or connect me on LinkedIn!
